Sunday, January 10, 2016

Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual Book Review

When I posted yesterday I blabbed a little about the lottery. It's 1.3 BILLION! Can you believe it? I played yesterday, and I won $4. Not too bad for my second time playing. I filled out four tickets so I got half my money back. I'm excited for Wednesday's drawing. I know the odds are about 1 in 300 million but it's nice to hope. That's definitely too much money for one person but it can go a long way to doing some good in this world.

Anyway, today I have my very first makeup book review.

I decided I wanted to see what I could learn from books because youtube just wasn't cutting it-except a couple of channels here and there. I thought I would start with Bobbi Brown because she's the first makeup artist I had ever heard of. I've heard great things about her makeup but haven't really tried anything except her foundation once.

The first couple of chapters educate the reader on the different brushes (some brushes are left out!) and how to purchase makeup.I especially appreciated her purchasing guide. The youtube beauty community can drive you to purchase, purchase, purchase, and she really emphasizes purchasing products if you are going to USE them and just being more careful in general. She has great information on beauty product shelf life that I wish I knew about years ago. But one thing I didn't like was how she mentioned you should throw away any powder product that break, when I learned that you can patch it up with some rubbing alcohol from a beauty forum.

I love how she emphasizes that it all starts with your lifestyle. Eat right, exercise, avoid smoking, and all the rest of that good stuff. Then she dives right into identifying your skin type and skincare. And there are some things I disagree with. She recommends icky things like propylene glycol and urea for dry skin and silicones for normal skin. Personally I think oils like argan, rosehip seed or butters like cocoa, and shea, will do much more to heal the skin than those ingredients. I will just disregard that section in the future.

I really like that she emphasizes the natural beauty a face has. Everyone has unique beauty and you use makeup to enhance rather than cover it up. This kind of goes with my beliefs that no one needs cosmetic procedures to fix a nose or freeze a forehead. Makeup can do all the enhancing one wants.

She starts in explaining how to apply makeup a couple chapters in. It was mostly the basics. Nothing seemed to go in depth. She didn't even really talk about contouring or what makeup application would suit different eye shapes. No information about undertones or what colors complement in terms of makeup. Nothing about picking a lipstick to complement the eye makeup. It was just very very basic. Some of the photography is beautiful, but I don't think it was that helpful I would have appreciated some face charts. Sometimes it looks like she just stuck the makeup brush or applicator close to the face and they snapped a photo. Some of the makeup was applied absolutely beautifully, but other times I felt the under eye concealer was too light or the blush too much. But makeup application is subjective so that's not how everyone will feel.

I was hoping there would be more info on eyebrows. She basically advises to get them done and maintain. Bummer!

After that she gives a summary of very basic application. Again. Basically everything you read in a brand new chapter.

She mentions some very interesting things in later chapters but just does a brief page on face charts, editorial looks, television makeup...and never goes in depth about any of it. It was just the very bare minimum. I wish she had posted more information about some of the makeup she has done for fashion shoots or on celebrities. She touches on bridal makeup, makeup for teens, makeup for the mature woman, but again, never anything in depth.

She speaks on inspiration. And then gave ONE example of something inspiring her and what she did. I wanted more. Lots more. But to be honest, I'm not sure her "creative" makeup is all that great from what I know. It wasn't demonstrated in the book.

Perhaps my favorite part of the book was when she talking about how to get started and all of the hard work that goes into being a makeup artist. I also love the little section of the book where she shares notable artist and lines. I will have fun googling some of the people and their work to learn a little more. I love the list of professional stores because I want to try out more professional products.

My favorite part of the book were the last couple of chapters and and I really wish she had took the time to give more detailed information instead of a brief overview. I loved the history of makeup section and I think I will pick up Lisa Eldridge new book to see what I can learn from that. Speaking of Lisa, I feel like I've learned a lot more from her youtube channel than from this book. And youtube is FREE!

Overall, it's a VERY BASIC manual. I still had fun reading it and will try out some of her techniques. Maybe I'll make a blog post on it? Who knows.